Tag: Highland cattle

The last few days have been tricky. The weather has made travelling around awkward and the snow has made it a bit more difficult for the livestock. We planned ahead and had supplementary feed available and distributed to local volunteers. In general our rare breeds and hill breeds are perfectly capable of dealing with this weather, certainly for a few days, but they do enjoy an easy feed when the opportunity arises.

Exmoor ponies with additional winter food

If it had just been the weather it would have been challenging enough but on top of it someone decided to cut the fence at Linton Lane enabling our Soay sheep to escape. This is difficult to deal with at the best of times but really unhelpful when other matters are taking up our time. The sheep are all back where they should be now. We just have to hope that the fence remains intact now. These little Soays are probably the hardiest of our sheep originating as a breed from the St Kilda group of islands and putting up with whatever the weather throws at them.

Our recently arrived Flexigraze cattle had to go through their TB testing this week. Despite the fact thet they have come from a TB free area it was a bit of an anxious time. They had the first part of it on Monday and were assessed on Thursday to ensure that there was no reaction. Fortunately all has gone well and they were all clear. They can now carry on with their work in grazing for us around Druridge Bay.